Open Source Accelerating Innovation
Presented by
Allison Randal
Thursday
3:40 p.m.–4:25 p.m.
Target audience:
Community
Abstract
The early days of the Open Source movement were all about creating an approachable on-ramp to software freedom. We focused strongly on the practical benefits of free software, and refined the message hoping to help the business sector better understand what we'd been saying since 1983. We succeeded to such an extent that modern Open Source is characterized by active use, participation, and contribution from the largest Fortune 50 tech giants to the smallest Silicon Valley startups, and everything in between. Success at our first goal doesn't mean we're done, it only means we're due to define the next phase of Open Source. The potential of what we might accomplish, using the resources of the entire tech industry, is both inspiring and daunting. Will we live up to that potential? This talk explores the past, present, and future of Open Source, and its impact on technology innovation in the industry today.
Presented by
Allison Randal
Allison is a software developer and open source strategist. She is president of the Open Source Initiative, board member at the OpenStack Foundation, board member at the Perl Foundation, and co-founder of the FLOSS Foundations group for open source leaders. She previously served as president of the Perl Foundation, chief architect of the Parrot virtual machine and chairman of the Board at the Parrot Foundation, board member at the Python Software Foundation, Open Source Evangelist and OSCON Conference Chair at O'Reilly Media, and Technical Architect of Ubuntu and Open Source Advisor at Canonical. She collaborates in the Debian, Python, and OpenStack projects, and currently works on open source strategy at Hewlett Packard Enterprise.